When it comes to content marketing, one of the best practitioners may be a man who wrote his last piece in 1969.
Howard Luck Gossage wrote ads, wrote about ads, and wrote about writing ads. But most of all he wrote about how to make each piece compelling enough that they weren’t mere interruptions – rather, people actually wanted to read them.
As he said himself, “Nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.”
Gossage also felt that the very notion of ‘consumers’ was perverse and unproductive: “People like to be treated as human beings rather than consumers, and they react very well to it, particularly when it comes to trotting down to the store …” Pretty contemporary thinking for a man who would have turned 100 this year.
Much of Gossage’s philosophy and writing has been neatly captured in a book, unimaginatively titled The Book of Gossage. You can grab a copy here, or if you swing by Mammal you’re very welcome to borrow ours.
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